Presenting our Flickr page!

Posted: 18th January 2012 by Alex Zhu in Uncategorized
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A little side project I’ve been working on recently is uploading all of our team’s old photos to a flickr account. Click here to go to it.

I’m almost done with it–I still have some nuNergy and SC5 photos to upload, but there’s already a massive amount of content there, which you can look through at your leisure. It’s like a living time-capsule of our team’s history! For example:

see our humble beginnings

relive the 2001 ASC

witness how tiring a day of raycing can be

watch former students hard at work creating nuSun

see how our trailer used to look

refresh yourself on how drivers used to sit in solar cars (hint: not upright!)

look at a beautiful sunset we saw on the ’08 race route

and of course, see us play with haybales.

Once I get the rest of the old pictures uploaded, I’ll make sure to upload current pictures as we take them.

Toolboxes from Festool

Posted: 12th January 2012 by Alex Zhu in Uncategorized
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We got 5 sets of brand-new Systainer toolboxes from Festool, a manufacturer of high-quality power tools.

These toolboxes will allow us to work more efficiently by enabling us to be more mobile and organized. Because the toolboxes are mounted on wheels and can be securely stacked on top of each other infinitely, we can quickly and safely transport large quantities of equipment now. This will come in handy when we’re road testing our car and need to do sudden, unplanned roadside repairs.

Also, the large variety of different sizes the toolboxes come in will help us organize all of our stuff, whether it’s large or small. Work sessions should go a lot smoother once we get the tools and supplies we use most frequently sorted into these boxes.

We are very, very grateful for Festool’s generosity, and can’t wait to make use of our new toolboxes! Thanks, Festool!

Foam from General Plastics

Posted: 12th January 2012 by Alex Zhu in Design Updates
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NUsolar would like to extend a thank-you to General Plastics for their generous donation of high-temperature, high-density foam. General Plastics is a leading supplier of high-density polyurethane foam to the aerospace, construction, marine, and other industries. Our General Plastics foam is currently being machined into plugs which will allow us to create the composite shell of our car.

We got the foam in separate shipments throughout late fall quarter and winter break. It was challenging moving the large and heavy shipments around (see below), but we managed to get it where we needed it to be.

We wholeheartedly appreciate General Plastics’ donation, it is a vital step in the process of getting SC6* out of the CAD screen and into the real world!

*SC6 is our tentative name for our 6th generation solar car, which we are currently working on. It just stands for solar car number 6. Do you have a more creative name we could use? Please leave it in a comment; we are looking for a better name!

Foam Plug Machining

Posted: 3rd January 2012 by Alex Zhu in Design Updates
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Over winter break, we sent the foam we got from General Plastics to be machined into plugs at Advanced Pattern Works in St. Louis. A plug is basically a life-size “template” of a part (in this case, our solar car), which is used in composites manufacturing. APW is machining the foam to the exact shape of our solar car using their advanced equipment, such as 5-axis CNC machines.

Around the end of the month, we’ll  go back to pick up our completed plugs. Then, we’ll use them to create a fiberglass mold and do carbon-fiber layups, the next steps in creating the shell of our new solar car. Needless to say, we can’t wait to get started on actually building the new car!

Also, everyone is back from winter break and we’re having our first team meeting tonight at 9:00pm. We’ll be going over the work we need to get done this quarter, share any important team updates, and I’m sure we’ll do something fun too.

Race route 2012: A Q&A with Sponsorship Chair Jonathan Cook

Posted: 6th December 2011 by Rose Pastore in Race Preparation
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Q: What’s your first impression of the route?
Jonathan Cook: I’m really excited because it crosses the entire Midwest, and being from the Midwest, at a Midwest university – that’s cool. Also, I’m looking forward to the starting point, the Monticello Motor Club. It’s like a country club, but instead of a golf course or a swimming pool it has a very nice race track. I’ve heard it’s one of the best road courses in the U.S. As a big racing fan, I’m looking forward to seeing how the racetrack feels.

Q: Is there anything you’re worried about?
J.C.: In terms of potential problems, there are a lot of areas that we’re unfamiliar with. The route is east to west rather than north-south, and that poses different issues because the sun travels a different path over the car. We know that we’re going from Madison to La Crosse and then up to St. Paul. La Crosse is surrounded by a lot of bluffs, different elevations. It might be worth taking a journey ahead of time to map out the area. Mountains are hard because we have to propel our car up them, and that takes a lot of energy. If we know there’s a very steep hill, we have to plan ahead. If we stop on the hill, we might not be able to accelerate enough to get over. That means we have to build up speed approaching the hill, but we can’t go over the speed limit of course. It’s nice to know the curvature of a hill ahead of time, whether it’s really steep at first and then shallows out and details like that.

Q: Tell me more about the Formula Sun Grand Prix at the Monticello Motor Club.
J.C.: The Formula Sun Grand Prix is technically its own race, but it effectively serves as the qualifier for the American Solar Challenge. It makes sure that all the cars are safe and stable enough to handle actual roads, and it gives us a chance to test our car for eight hours. The track race is usually a lot more fun, too. You get to hang out with the other teams, show off your car, chat about new features, etc. Usually it’s really difficult to test our cars before the race happens. We have to leave for the race the week after finals, or sometimes during finals. But this race starts on July 6, which means we’ll have two or three weeks after our finals to prepare the car, do testing, fine-tune our race strategy and maybe even survey the route beforehand.

Q: What’s the next step in preparing for the race?
J.C.: We need to get data on specific elevation changes in the hills, on sunlight level, stoplights and that kind of stuff. We need to figure out how we’re going to survey the route to get all that data. In an ideal world, we’d drive it all with the solar car, but that’s too expensive and takes too much time, so we’re going to have to find another way.

q: what’s your first impression of the route?

Canoe Mockup

Posted: 3rd November 2011 by Alex Zhu in Design Updates
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Last week, we used wood to make a mockup of the canoe of our solar car. The canoe is the part of our car where the driver will sit, and it got it’s name from the shape of it’s underside.

The mockup will be used to make sure the canoe is big enough to fit everything that needs to go inside it, before we actually make the body of our car. By everything, I mean the driver, acceleration pedal, brake pedal, steering wheel, steering column, roll cage, power switches, radios, driver seat, harnesses, vents, and more.

It is also useful as a design aid, and will help us determine the best places to put things in the canoe so the driver can use them (relatively) easily. For example, I’ll be taking a look at the mockup this weekend to figure out where the best place to put the driver’s ventilation inlet is.

Driver & Project Manager Jess Sudo tries the mockup on for size

Meet the new players

Posted: 16th October 2011 by Rose Pastore in Team members
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Four new team members came out yesterday to test the car. We drove it around our usual haunts – Green Bay Road and Sheridan. Nothing broke, so the new kids perhaps didn’t learn much.

Meet ‘em:

Matt Felz is a freshman from Buffalo Grove, Ill. He’s a mechanical engineering major and joined the team to gain skills. “It’s a good time over here,” he said.

Matt Felz, freshman

Junior Esther Wolff is from Evanston, Ill. She majors in manufacturing and design engineering and said she joined the team to get hands-on experience.

Esther Wolff, junior

Mihir Boddupalli is a freshman from Naperville, Ill. He hasn’t declared a major yet but knows it will be in engineering. He wants to get some practical experience working with the car. And: “I thought it was cool.”

Mihir Boddupalli, freshman

Ola Okeowo is a freshman from Nigeria. He’s a mechanical engineering major and said he’s excited about the renewable energy aspect of NUsolar. And he loves cars.

Ola Okeowo, freshman

Busy, busy, OrgoChem, busy

Posted: 13th October 2011 by Rose Pastore in General Info
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Alex Zhu took this enlightening screenshot of the team’s collective calendar. And this doesn’t even include our weekly meetings on Wednesday at 9 p.m. Whew.

We even get to eat lunch sometimes

Learning, just ’cause

Posted: 5th October 2011 by Rose Pastore in Uncategorized
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Working for money and toiling for grades have kept me away from the team so far this fall. But tonight I arrived in our usual meeting room to see it milling with strangers. Small strangers. Yes – our team has been taken over by a bright, excited flock of freshmen, and they’re in boot camp.

I’m lurking at the right side of the room. At one chalkboard panel up front, Chris Yungmann is demonstrating in rough, noisy white lines how the controller-area network functions. The newbies are watching, sort of slouching, but they’re asking good questions.

In the middle of the room, Jonathan Cook sits on a table while the new ones lean back in their chairs, which make a half-circle around him. He’s explaining the finer points of sponsorship and speaking longingly of all the amazing things we could do with more money. “We’re cooking up something cool,” he says to me.

It’s late at night; it’s their first month of college; the lesson projected on the screen in tiny text is confusing; and the freshmen want to be here anyway! Go team.

First meeting of the year

Posted: 30th September 2011 by Alex Zhu in General Info
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We had our first official team meeting Wednesday night at the Technological Institute. At the meeting we welcomed all our new members, mainly freshmen, and gave them a clearer picture of what exactly NUsolar is.

The meeting started in a classroom, where we went over all the different teams that NUsolar is compromised of. These include the:

Sponsorship and marketing team, which handles NUsolar’s public relations, media communications and the corporate partnerships which make the team possible

Outreach team, which manages the team’s attendance at community events like the Evanston Green Living Festival, Skokie Spring Greening, and local school appearances.

Electrical team, which designs the battery pack and solar array, and makes sure the electrical systems (which manage battery charging, airgap, regenerative braking, battery protection and live telemetry) function correctly.

Mechanical team, which designs the mechanical aspects of the car like the brakes, chassis, suspension, roll cage, outer shell, seat, and essentially everything else that doesn’t fall into the electrical team’s realm.

After everyone learned about the different teams and what they do, we all went outside to play with the car. Hopefully seeing and touching SC5 helped our new members understand the basics of how a solar car works, and illustrated the immense scale of a solar car design project. Last year when I first joined, I couldn’t believe that an entire, fully functional solar car could be designed by college students. A year later, and I’m a college student who is designing a solar car.

We stuck around for some Q & A and got to know each other, then put the car back in the garage and headed home as it was getting late.

New members inspect SC5 while old members answer questions

Our main mission for the rest of the year is to complete our next-generation solar car. We need to have it ready in time for American Solar Challenge 2012, which will probably be held in June. Considering how huge of an undertaking building a complete solar car in under a year is, then adding homework, exams, other activities, a social life (sometimes) and everything else that comes with being a full-time student on top of that, it is clear that time will be a commodity. As we make our way through this ambitious year, be sure to check back on this blog, or our Facebook & Twitter pages to see how we’re doing!

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